Vendor Hong Nguyen
Hong Nguyen, 38, was born in Saigon during the Vietnam there. As the daughter of a black American soldier she experienced discrimination but she started to work in her mother’s restaurant when she was just 13. She worked in Vietnam as a children’s nurse and businesswoman. In Finland Hong Nguyen became a kiosk vendor.
After the war in Vietnam the offspring of American soldiers were scorned. Hong Nguyen’s mother fled to the countryside so that her family would not attract attention.
“I didn’t even go to school, so the only alternative was a poor education at home. That’s why I don’t even know my native language properly, let alone mathematics or English.”
As Nguyen grew up her mother took her daughter along to help out at her restaurant, and also chose a husband for her. Nguyen did well in the countryside as a trader in food supplies, but lost her business when she got divorced.
She took her two sons and returned to Saigon, worked as a child nurse and a seamstress, and started her own clothes business.
When she met her Finnish husband she moved to Finland. In Helsinki Nguyen distributed magazines under the guidance of her husband, went on a vocational course, did cleaning work, and later became an assistant in an ethnic food shop.
When her knowledge of the language got better, Nguyen got a job as a vendor at an R kiosk in Pasila, where she needed to know about betting games.
“At first I didn’t know any of the products in the kiosk. A customer told me what 3A batteries were and what shelf I could find them on.”
“The manager agreed to send me on a Veikkaus Online training course. The course lasted just one day, and it was all much too fast for me. I passed, but I was not completely sure about everything. I learnt some more from the regulars at the kiosk.”
A year later Nguyen got a permanent job in the company. Now she works at a kiosk in Kannelmäki.
“The customers treated me really well, although I did not even know the brand names of the goods. Now I can even train the new vendors. I don’t necessarily know everything, but I always find out.”
Hong Nguyen does shift work and also works weekends at the kiosk. The job calls for constant training, as the range of products is always expanding.
In addition to the normal goods sold in a kiosk they now sell travel tickets, rent out games and films, and sell mobile phone subscriptions, broadband connections and pay-channel TV cards.
“Apart from sales and serving the customers I keep the place clean, take delivery of the goods, stock the shelves and do the newspaper returns. And the coffee always has to be fresh. At the end of the day I count up the takings.”
Nguyen is content, because in Vietnam she got used to hard work. She can work in the kiosk as along as she likes but setting up her own business is always something that interests her. A small restaurant or coffee-shop perhaps? She has no intention of going back to Vietnam.
“My mother and sister have moved from Saigon to America. I’ve been to see them, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The Americans only seem to think about money.”
Text and photograph: Anu Likonen, Jukka Vuolle and Nanni Akkola
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy